Beautiful and Distant Like the Stars
by RocksCanFly
Summary: You know the truth, that he loves you in a way you don't love him. Like he used to love Tula. And- You want so much to love him. You really fucking do.


It's a normal patrol night, except for how it's _really_ not. It's the first time you've been out here while sober in what seems like ages, and the first time you've had fun on the job in even longer.

Kaldur's here with you, jumping the gaps between buildings with grace and ease that you've lost. You're out of practice, and you know it. But that's okay. You're stumbling on the landings, but it's a lot less than it was two weeks ago. Your arms are still weak, but you haven't had to stop for a breather for at least half an hour now. That's a big improvement, and you'll take it.

This is the second time you've gotten clean, and you pray that this time it lasts _(you know it won't but praying is what they've always told you to do in hopeless situations._

_Never mind that it's never worked before._

_Never mind that you know any god who cared gave up long ago._

_Never mind that you're not sure if monsters who steal little boys' skins and live their lives even get saved)._

This is the second time, and it _needs_ to last. Because you really don't want to go back. Well, no. You _really_ fucking do. Withdrawals are a bitch, and the heroin helps you forget that everything you've ever had has been stolen from some poor boy who you've been failing for the past three years.

You still haven't found Speedy, and the guilt and irritation of that burns under your skin, your constant companion.

Except for tonight.

Tonight the air is cool and fresh and Star City looks unusually beautiful in the glowing haze of smog and streetlights. You've bagged six scumbags, knocked out by arrows and water bearers and tied up nice and pretty for pick-up by the cops.

Tonight Kaldur's with you, and you're laughing together like you haven't in forever. He's just Kaldur your friend tonight. Not some protective guardian who hold your hands through the shakes and disposes of your carefully hidden stashes taped to the underside of the sink and the inside of air vents.

_(You decidedly don't think about the one he missed, at the bottom of the oatmeal canister, as your feet thud down for yet another stumbling landing.)_

Tonight is wonderful, because the man running beside you doesn't summon up half the guilt and resentment that he did just a week ago. You feel like you've finally gotten your friend back.

Maybe it's better to say you've gotten yourself back, and you can finally remember what friendship with Kaldur is _supposed _to feel like.

The two of you stop on a high rooftop with a view of the harbor. You sit together, panting, on the edge of the roof. Your thighs press together, and you can see his gills fluttering in the corner of your eyes. The last two weeks haven't been easy on him either. You'll feel guilty for that later. You're too happy right now, and you want to savor it.

(_It won't last_)

You break the silence after a few minutes, when you've both caught your breath and moved back from the edge to lie side by side and stare up at the sky.

"I forgot how good this felt," you sigh, stretching your arms out and folding them behind your head. They burn more than you'd like, but it still feels good. _Normal_, or close to it, feels good.

You don't need to look over to know that he's smiling softly when he says, "I am glad that you are feeling better my friend."

You talk more, lie joking together in the starlight. Nights like this are rare enough now days that you can't help but open up, try to take everything in. You don't know when you'll get to do this again, so you don't hold back.

His hands stretch out behind him, brush against yours as he mimics your pose. You stare up into the night, trying to pick out the stars. You don't need to turn over to know he looks beautiful right now, eyes silver in the light and a glow to his dark skin and light hair.

You don't need to look over to know he's looking at you out of the corner of his eyes. Hungrily, like he wants to kiss you.

You know he does. Want to kiss you, that is. It's happened before and probably will again, when you're both drunk off your asses and he's careless enough to go for it and you're careless enough to let him.

You've never gone beyond kissing, warm and soft against alley walls and sweet and melancholy on your own couch. You've never talked about it afterwards. Your hangovers after nights like that are lonely and the back of your throat always tastes more like regret than stale alcohol when you wake up alone in your apartment. He never brings it up after. Neither do you.

But you know the truth, that he loves you in a way you don't love him. Like he used to love Tula.

_And-_

You want so much to love him. You really fucking do.

It'd make things simpler, for one. It's not like you're not attracted to him. He is, as you've said and as you'd have to be _blind_ not to see, beautiful. In every way.

And that's part of what makes this mess so fucking terrible and awkward. He's wonderful. Unerringly loyal, kind, calm and collected. Everything you've never been and know you never can be.

There's no reason _not_ to love him. He's stood by you through everything. Three weeks ago, when you were lying miserable and high on your floor, used needles littering the ground and an unbreakable haze over your entire world, he came and literally kicked your door down. Again. Like he always does. It's a thing of his, breaking down people's barriers.

_Except_.

Except he's never been able to break down his own. He's always holding back something, muting himself. And that, that restraint. It-

It bugs the ever living **_fuck_** out of you.

Even now, when you're lying together on a random rooftop, and the stars are fighting their way through the glare of city light, and everything should be happy and warm and relaxed- and. It fucking **_isn't._**

Because even in these moments, when the tension has left his shoulders and the semi-permanent lines on his brow have smoothed away. Even when he's laughing softly, his body shaking next to yours. It's there. That sense that he's holding something back, muffling himself under layers of restraint.

You don't understand it. You don't understand it, and it makes you furious. It makes you feel like you have to react and let loose enough for the both of you. Because even _after all this time_ he hasn't learned how to reach out.

And you know it's not because he's Atlantean. You've met Tula and Garth. Even Orin has more openness and warmth to him. The barriers he keeps are all him, all his fucking complexities of insecurity and caution and- And.

And sometimes you wonder, traitor that you are, if he even can feel the way you do. If he's capable, if there's something under there under that thick veneer of calm.

The worst part is that you know there is. You've **_seen_** if.

You've seen it come out in battle, when one of his kids is knocked out on the ground. When a villain gets a little too close to taking one of the fantastic six down for good, you've seen him. Angry and wild eyed and efficiently cold, the kind of cold that burns.

You've seen him open and tender, not least with his younger teammates. That kid, Gar, when he turned up lonely and lost and alone in the world with Megan's blood in his veins and her color on his skin. Kaldur had wrapped his arms around those small shoulders, kind as can be and ready to do anything to help that poor kid feel welcomed in the patchwork family that they've made in the mountain.

You've seen him open and tender and hurting and utterly alive. But it's a rare thing, and it never last long before he's shutting that light behind a cool façade.

And he's only been that way with you once; when your entire world had crashed in around your ears and he needed you to come save the world with him.

And it never happened again. Not one screaming match over your addiction, not one punch thrown in anger of you practically destroying yourself. Only calm, cool, collected Kaldur'ahm who keeps his head and thinks logically and hardly bothers ducking when his best friend throws a beer bottle at his face and calls him a heartless bitch in the middle of a withdrawal-fueled rage.

Only calm cool collected Kaldur who kisses soft and hesitant even when he's drunk off his ass and completely in love with someone he knows he can't have.

Who never says a thing beyond the usual warning when he sees scratches down his best friends back left by an evil ninja assassin. Who doesn't even blink when he finds her panties in said friend's laundry the day after said best friend lets him kiss him stupid on the same couch she had parked her bare ass on the night before.

Cool, calm, unflappable Kaldur who never lets anyone under his skin and who's been under yours since the day you met.

And.

And it feels like a betrayal. Because you've _literally_ put yourself, everything that you are, into his hands time and time again. You've made the leap of faith a dozen times over, and he's still clinging to the edge.

You know you're not a reliable person. Kaldur has good reason not to trust you.

But he's like that with everyone. Always has been, even with Tula. Who he let go. Who he let believe that she'd only broken a childhood crush and not smashed his heart all over the ocean floor.

He's always muting himself, letting just enough of a light shine out to tease with its brilliance, with how much he feels inside and how much he'll never share that huge, shining part of himself with you.

Because he's grown up in two worlds that don't accept him and never will. Whether it's because of his gills or his strange formal speech or his sexuality or what-have-you, he's learned to hide himself away and isn't intending on breaking that habit anytime soon.

Not even for you.

You get it. And you still love him the way you love a brother or a friend or someone who shares your very soul. Because he's all these things to you, always fucking will be, even if he wises up one day and leaves you to rot. _(You know he never will, and you've accepted that you're going to hurt him time and time again)_

But that doesn't mean that every stifled bit of laughter, every hesitant confession, every clenched back emotion hidden behind sea glass eyes and a firm line of a mouth isn't a stab in _the fucking gut_.

So you're content to lie here on the roof with him under the stars and let him look his fill. To ignore the thing stretching out between the two of you. You know he'll never reach for it, not really.

You think, with the kind of cruelty you've only ever saved for the people you love the most, that he can no more grasp love than he can twine his fingers with your own. Distance is inherent in his nature.

You know he'll always be alone, beautiful and distant like the stars above you.


End file.
